Victims testify how Lackland trainer exploited security lapses

Updated 12:49 am, Sunday, July 22, 2012

Graduates from Air Force basic military training parade at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland this past July. We owe them an environment free from intimidation and abuse.

Graduates from Air Force basic military training parade at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland this past July. We owe them an environment free from intimidation and abuse.

Photo: Billy Calzada, San Antonio Express-News

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Recruits are instructed to obey their instructors at all times during basic training.

Recruits are instructed to obey their instructors at all times during basic training.

Photo: Billy Calzada, San Antonio Express-News

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The distinctive “Smokey Bear” hats are worn by Lackland instructors during basic training. Walker allegedly sent a photo of himself posing shirtless with his hat to a female airman.

The distinctive “Smokey Bear” hats are worn by Lackland instructors during basic training. Walker allegedly sent a photo of himself posing shirtless with his hat to a female airman.

Photo: Billy Calzada, San Antonio Express-News

Victims testify how Lackland trainer exploited security lapses

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About three weeks into a basic training camp last spring, Staff Sgt. Luis A. Walker ordered one of his recruits to retrieve cleaning towels from an empty dorm.

He had special instructions for her.

“He told me to go five minutes after him because of the cameras,” said the trainee, a young woman from Abilene identified as Airman 7. “He didn't want anybody to know we were up there together.”

Once inside the building, he directed her to an office with a bed. He closed the door, pulled her to him and had sex with her.

“I was so confused that I really didn't say anything. I was too scared,” she said. “I just let it happen.”

Her account, which came last week before Walker was convicted on charges that he sexually abused 10 young female trainees, was strikingly similar to the stories told by the other women.

One after the other, in a cramped courtroom at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, the recruits detailed the apparent ease with which Walker singled them out and exploited lax security to seek sexual favors from them in stairwells, vacant offices and empty dorms. At the heart of those isolated encounters was the starkest pattern of all: In almost every case, the women submitted to his advances, although he used no force.

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In the strictly regimented military setting, where rules forbid instructors from being alone with female recruits, how Walker targeted the women has raised alarms about the safety of one of the nation's largest training grounds. The case poses questions about how well the Air Force equips trainees to protect themselves against the same instructors they are conditioned to obey.

Whether the Walker case reflects a broader problem in the Air Force remains unclear. It is part of a larger sex scandal that has exploded since Walker was charged in December. A dozen training instructors are under investigation for sexual misconduct with 31 female trainees at Lackland, which is home to Air Force basic training.

Last month, Gen. Edward Rice Jr. launched an investigation of all units in the training command, but he said he does not believe the problem is endemic. The instructors came from three squadrons.

So far, there is no indication that top Air Force officials mishandled cases once they came to light. But the allegations have been slow to emerge. Not one of the women involved came forward.

The case against Walker began to unfold only after one trainee confided in a close friend in the unit, known as a training flight. Later, when her friend was removed to another flight to repeat part of boot camp, she disclosed what she knew about the instructor.

Hours later, about 2 a.m. on June 25, 2011, Walker was removed from his command in the 326th squadron. By that time, he had been left alone to supervise female units for about nine months. One woman had been raped, and five others had been sexually assaulted. Others were kissed, groped and harassed into exposing themselves to him.

Easy prey

Lackland provided a perfect hunting ground for Walker, whose authority as an instructor gave him control over the smallest aspects of the women's lives.

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His advances almost always began the same way. Despite a prohibition against one-on-one contact with female trainees, he often called them out of their dorms through an intercom. Once outside, he directed them to stairwells beyond the reach of surveillance cameras or ordered them to his office, where he assigned them to mundane tasks behind a closed door.

While alone, he put the women at ease with casual chats about their careers and home life. Then the sexual comments began. He asked about piercings, tattoos and birth marks. He commented on their bodies. Profane talk turned to touching and assault.

As the women told it, those frequent meetings drew no attention. One of the victims, identified as Airman 1, testified that on the night Walker raped her in an empty dorm, she was gone from her unit for at least an hour.

No one asked her anything, she said.

Defense attorneys questioned how the meeting had gone unnoticed, and why no other evidence was available to corroborate her story. She said she was surprised that no one had paid attention or at least stopped her as she walked alone to and from the dorm after hours, a violation that could have merited stiff punishment.

She suggested that video footage might support her story.

“I would think they'd be able to find something because there's video cameras as you walk up to each dorm,” she said.

But the video cameras were little help.

The lead investigator in the case, Special Agent Mark Ryan, testified that no footage was available as evidence of any of the incidents because recordings on the base are rewritten after 20 days.

Other safeguards that should have discouraged the assault failed. Although footage from surveillance cameras appears on video monitors in a control room, Tech Sgt. Richard Capestro testified that no one is assigned to watch them.

He also said that keys to supply rooms and dormitories, including those that are vacant, are not issued to training instructors. But instructors can easily obtain them temporarily without signing a log, he said.

“There was no accountability,” he said.

Instilled with fear

For fresh recruits, fear of their training instructors is drilled into them from the instant they step off the bus. In an exercise designed to create chaos and confusion, instructors shout rapid-fire orders at trainees until they are exhausted.

Instructors frequently remind recruits that they can be ejected from boot camp or forced to repeat it for the smallest infraction.

Walker used unpredictable methods to instill trainees with fear. He set himself apart from other drill sergeants by asking female trainees about their problems and presenting himself as someone who cared, someone they could trust.

But he also showed a darker side. He referred to the women as “his bitches” and announced his entrance with bravado by saying, “Daddy's home.”

He liked to remind the women he was a god, accountable to no one, and he lorded it over them. At one point, Walker arranged for a fellow instructor to ask his recruits if he used profanity. When one of the women acknowledged that Walker had sworn at them, he forced them to do pushups and yelled at them until their arms gave out.

Every one of the women targeted by Walker said his control over them was so complete that when he pushed himself on them, resistance seemed impossible.

Like all other basic training recruits, the women under Walker's command spent seven of their 8 ½ weeks at Lackland before they received a class on how to report sexual assault.

Advocates said Walker's case points to a dangerous failing in the way the Air Force teaches recruits. The limits of trainers' authority need to be made more clear at a time when vulnerable young women are being taught to take orders without question.

“They're incapable of receiving the kind of help they need and also navigating their chain of command when the entire purpose of their immediate supervisors is to break them down,” said Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps officer who is executive director of Service Women's Action Network.

“You are trained to say, ‘yes sir,' to everything,” said former Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jennifer Norris, a military sexual trauma advocate. “You know that there will be negative repercussions if you say no or if you fight back.”

Norris said the Air Force is missing an opportunity to raise awareness about sexual assault.

Empowering trainees

Hoping to quell safety concerns, Lackland officials two weeks ago opened the base for a tour of the facility and offered interviews with recruits in their fifth week of training. Many of the women said they had received a clear instruction about how to report complaints.

As a result of the scandal, Air Force officials have added vignettes to the training course for drill instructors to emphasize appropriate boundaries with recruits.

Changes since the investigation began include a speech now given by Col. Glenn Palmer, commander of the 737th Training Group, on the third day of basic training.

Palmer tells new recruits they must immediately report any sexual overtures or harassment. As a direct response to the discovery that several women were near the end of boot camp, Palmer last month began repeating his talk in the last week of training.

“We're educating and empowering the trainees by encouraging them to report,” said Colleen McGee, spokeswoman for the 37th Training Wing. “Which is what we've done in the past. We're just making sure that we're being very clear on it.”

Col. Polly Kenny said she could not address questions about whether Walker had taken advantage of security lapses at the base.